I got a call yesterday asking if I was ok because my posting flow had slowed down and no new photos were showing up. Well, the answer is yes and no.
I was working on a video for the new webpage and doing AI upscaling. My big system started to sound like a 747 landing. It has always been loud, so I figured that was normal. Then it suddenly shut off. At the same time, my Windows 10 system that runs all the “outside” work shut down too. So there I was, looking at two dead systems.
I have reached the age where I do not panic. I just calmly said, Ok, what now?. Then, like a message from above, came a notification. Package at the front door. It was the shipment I was waiting for. My brand new 22TB drive. This was to dump my entire Windows 10 system and then migrate everything to my new Windows 11 machine.
I had one of those programs that claims to do it all automatically. I gleefully pressed the big transfer button. Simple, easy, and a total failure. It said 644 hours to complete. Really. Was it using a carrier pigeon? Being a veteran of moving computers since the dawn of Windows, I quickly abandoned the auto button and went back to the hand method. Directory Opus and brute force copy.
Ten-hour copy estimated. Fine. I let it simmer. Came back, and the screen was sitting at a boot screen. Now a little panic. Both systems are stuck. Did I anger the computer gods? Fired them back up and checked the Chelmsford news feed. The power had gone out. The blinking stove clock confirmed the answer. The power gods were the ones unhappy, not the computer gods. So back to another ten hours of copying.
This time it completed.
Now begins the great migration. Cloud made plenty of things easy. A few programs I no longer had registration info for, but thankfully I keep all kinds of notes in LastPass because I have been down the rocky road to Dublin many times. Any time I can reference that movie, I do. In this case I mean “Sinners,” a cool vampire movie.
So here I sit at 4 in the morning getting ready to restore everything to my new system. My other system I use for video editing, schoolwork, and gaming is off at the computer day spa. Lappy Fix. A hidden gem in Chelmsford. When needed, it is a godsend. The owner is one of those old-school tech wizards who can fix almost anything.
I have been on PCs since the mid seventies. When your machine sounds like a 747 on final landing, something is seriously wrong with cooling. Computer cooling is no less complex than a NASA rocket and can blow up like SpaceX if not done right. He charges a flat hundred dollars to diagnose and repair plus parts. Worth every penny in a case like this. When I dropped mine off, there were four ahead of me, and it was Friday. So Monday it should come back sounding like a kitten instead of a jet.
This is also a great chance to strip my office down and replace all the old cables, dead lines, and power adapters that seem to multiply over the last ten years. Time for a fresh start. All Windows 11. Two powerful systems. A clean rack of drives. I should be able to retire some old drives now that the new 22TB has room to absorb many of them. Anything under 8TB can go.
So yes, I will be back soon. Out and about. Posting new photos and stories. Resuming upgrades to video and sorting some of the twenty thousand photos into new galleries on the COSS website that is coming along nicely. I expect a few more rocks on the rocky road to a new network system, but I can see the light and figure Tuesday I will be back in full swing.
-Phil Stanway